By Aiju Salminen
Pictures taken by Aiju Salminen and Teemu Kumpulainen with Lomography Diana Mini camera

We had a summer holiday roadtrip in USA. Rented a car, and drove from Seattle, Washington to Los Angeles California. As a big fan of American 50’s and 60’s rock’n’roll music and design, I was delighted how that time period still existed around smaller towns stuck next to Highway 101. The bigger cities had moved on to the next century, becoming more up-to-date and modern, but the sleepy little roadside motels and diners could have been straight from The Happy Days. Was it because no one had the energy to make things more modern? Or was it because 1950’s was the golden age for the U.S., and they wanted to linger in that safe, cuddly time when everything was fine and dandy. The way things looked reminded me of the time I had not been born yet. The time when the summers were always warm and sunny but no one knew about global warming. The time when the atomic bomb was so awesome that you could organize Miss Atomic Bomb beauty pageant without a hint of irony. How sweet.

(Photo: Aiju Salminen & Teemu Kumpulainen)

I really enjoyed seeing the old sights families had traveled to see for decades. And I took pictures of all the sun-bleached sights like they deserved, with an old-fashioned analog film camera. We went to Castroville where they had built “the world’s biggest artichoke to lure tourists. It coud have been a big hit back in the days when Marilyn Monroe was crowned as Miss Artichoke, now we were the only ones to take a picture of the artificial vegetable standing in front of the parking lot. We drank coffee in a café, accompanied only by the bored teenager who worked there.

(Photo: Aiju Salminen & Teemu Kumpulainen)

We went to see the gigantic redwood drive-trough tree, (It was still possible to drive trough it, but people had smaller cars back then – the big SUV’s people have nowadays could not fit trough). We also went to “Prehistoric Gardens”, a forest with man-made life-size dinosaurs. No one was there except us, and the silent dinosaurs that had been standing there for nearly fourty years. Our roadtrip’s final destination was Hollywood. We took the touristy pictures of the legendary Hollywood-sign. We also thought about going to see the “King Kong 360 3-D Experience with ultra-high definition projectors”. But I guess we weren’t ready yet for a experience like that, and so we went to a record store and spent our last money on some old used LP’s instead.